This article is the first in a series exploring themes derived from Randolph Hester and others for development of place/cities, an Australian Ecological Democracy framework. Viv Straw if a Fellow of the PIA and Tony Trobe is an Architect who writes for the Canberra Times. TT: Viv you have some radical ideas about the future of planning in Canberra and our cities, in general, would you like to explain them to us? VS: Tony, Globally four major trends characterise changes in urban typology. The first of these is urban resurgence which is a function of people moving back to cities. Cities are attractive, lively places to live and work, and centres of intellectual and creative capacity. The second is the High-tech, global economy which has been a driver of recent economic expansion and new opportunities in cities. The third is a recognition that there is a need to diversify land uses and build solid revenue basis, and the need to create livable urban centres. And the fourth is a trend towards an increased investment in mass transit or urban transit opportunities and to orient development toward urban transit rather than private commuting options. The convergence of these trends leads to the realisation that a substantial market exists for new forms of walkable, mixed-use urban development around a new light rail, rail or rapid bus interchanges. More than 100 American...

Hello, I am the armchair geographer and welcome to this week’s blog on integrated regional planning and population. In this blog, we will be looking at the tools that are available to geographers to investigate demographics. There are essentially two ways that the national economy can change, population change and innovation. So let’s review demography and the role that it plays in the well-being of our country and then the role of innovation in the next episode. The population debate can be quite contentious with people arguing that we should have a larger population, a smaller population, or a sustainable population. The fundamentals are; age profile, education, attitudes, mobility, and location. And then we can move on to looking at work profiles, household profiles and what implications do these have for housing, employment, provision of services and government infrastructure? Capacity When we think about the population regarding capacity, there are two ways of looking at it. The first is the capacity of a nation to carry a particular population size. By this we might mean, what are the national resources; water, food growing capacity, land capacity and impacts on our existing urban infrastructure. And what capacity is there to source resources from other parts of the world? The second way of looking at capacity is to look at the ability of the population to sustain itself. Issues that might...